Featuring Yvon Chouinard, Founder of Patagonia and

Vincent Stanley, Writer and editor for Patagonia

Moderator: Yale Divinity School alumnus Robert Massie, an author, environmental leader and Episcopal priest

Yvon Chouinard and Vincent Stanley, authors of The Responsible Company: What We’ve Learned from Patagonia’s First 40 Years, will be at Yale to discuss how a highly successful company can spread a message of environmental responsibility. Moderating the conversation will be Yale Divinity School alumnus Robert Massie of the New Economics Institute - an author, environmental leader and Episcopal priest.

Patagonia, named by Fortune in 2007 as the coolest company on the planet, has earned a reputation as much for its ground-breaking environmental and social practices as for the quality of its clothes. In The Responsible Company, Chouinard and Stanley draw on their collective experience at Patagonia to provide advice on how to create responsible, green business practices during difficult economic times. Chouinard, a noted alpinist and environmentalist, is the founder and owner of the high-end sportswear company. In 2007 Fortune Magazine named him “the most successful outdoor businessman alive today.” Stanley, Chouinard’s nephew and one of Patagonia’s original employees, is co-editor of the company’s Footprint Chronicles, which tracks the environmental impact of products and addresses pressing social and environmental issues.

The Responsible Company, published by Patagonia Books, recounts how the firm gained the confidence to make its work progressively more responsible and to share its experience with many other companies, such as Wal-Mart. The book shows companies how to live up to Patagonia’s own motto: “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.” It concludes with specific, practical steps every business can take to achieve these goals.

This event is supported by the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, Yale Divinity School and Yale School of Management. It is part of the GE Colloquium in Sustainability Leadership, a speaker series focused on sustainability careers in the corporate sector, which is sponsored by the GE Foundation.